Picture Story (click image to see full version)

There are things in life that you say and immediately wish you could take away. Things that you'd swallow half you're face to take back. Stanley did just that after telling his wife, Virginia, that her new dress made her look...a little thick. He cupped his wrinkled bottom lip over his jaw and nearly folded his face in two. He hunched over in his ragged navy blue robe as he sat on the edge of their squeaky old bed.
Virginia thought about when she first met Stanley. 60 years ago things were much different. His hair was neatly slicked back, and his mustache was neatly combed. He was in the middle of a market trying to sell people wardrobes for small spaces. He was what her mother and father referred to as a "city slicker" and she was a slender farm girl aching for change.
Virginia dazed off into a world filled with her past and leaned against the door of her messy closet. The shrill screech of her pet monkey, Langston. It was 5pm, time for Langston to eat. He was bouncing around the kitchen in his tiny bow tie and matching shorts. She poured a banana smoothie into his dish and gave him a squiggly straw. He sat at the table and sucked it down, looking up at her and smiling adoringly from time to time.
The kitchen phone rang and Virginia and Stanley's granddaughter Gail was whaling into the phone about a nightmare she'd had during her nap where skeletons of dinosaurs and dead animals chased her around. Virginia calmed her as much as she could while washing the dishes and pouring the rest of Langston's smoothie into his cup. Virginia settled into her evening, feeling dissatisfied and lumpy. She just wanted to take a hot bubble bath and start all over.

(I hated this story)

Color Association Stories (click image to see full version)

I remember when my mother decided to paint our living and dining room teal. She came home one evening with three large buckets of paint from Home Depot. I was 10; too cool to help but bored enough to watch. She slathered the teal mess all over the walls. She even put on a pair of old overalls and a bandanna. My father came home from a weekend trip and hated it. He said she'd traded in butter-cream lovely for true teal (truly disappointing teal). She painted over the molding and got spatters on the ceiling. Our family dog had teal speckles on her floppy black ears for at least a month. After a few month she was holding up paint samples again, now its a mauve-ish pink color.


One of my best friends has a friend who I don't particularly like. That friend is getting married soon. She's one of those wedding-on-a-budget types. She'll be at Michael's and Frank's almost every day sifting through isles of decorative nonsense looking for things to make her bridesmaids make the week of her wedding. I'm glad I don't know her that well. The first time I met her, she pulled out a scrapbook that was overflowing with swatches, magazine cut-outs, scraps of paper with notes, and paint samples. She pointed to two of the samples and gingerly put them together. She said, "These are my colors. What do you think?" I wanted to say, "Your wedding is going to look like you and your man are huge Tiger fans, and you aren't even from Detroit. Burnt orange and Navy blue are NOT wedding colors, pick something else." But I simply nodded and said, "Well that's unique."

Found Poetry

Buried Cites

living in covered eruption
quiet and thundered
move into dust
thick and wild
ordinarily trouble
crushed wind bellowing sick

Out of the Fog

The fourth fog sprang had,
shouting to be rescued.
Fainter soon,
bitter shelter,
unconscious thought wondered.
We cry out.